TRV
Translation
King James Version
¶ Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
Complete Jewish Bible
“Stiffnecked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You continually oppose the Ruach HaKodesh! You do the same things your fathers did!
Berean Standard Bible
You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did.
American Standard Version
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye.
World English Bible Messianic
“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.
Geneva Bible (1599)
Ye stiffenecked and of vncircumcised heartes and eares, ye haue alwayes resisted the holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do you.
Young's Literal Translation
`Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and in ears! ye do always the Holy Spirit resist; as your fathers--also ye;
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In the KJVVerse 27,168 of 31,102
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Commentary on Acts 7 verses 51–53
51 ¶ Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:
53 Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.
Stephen was going on in his discourse (as it should seem by the thread of it) to show that, as the temple, so the temple-service must come to an end, and it would be the glory of both to give way to that worship of the Father in spirit and in truth which was to be established in the kingdom of the Messiah, stripped of the pompous ceremonies of the old law, and so he was going to apply all this which he had said more closely to his present purpose; but he perceived they could not bear it. They could patiently hear the history of the Old Testament told (it was a piece of learning which they themselves dealt much in); but if Stephen go about to tell them that their power and tyranny must come down, and that the church must be governed by a spirit of holiness and love, and heavenly-mindedness, they will not so much as give him the hearing. It is probable that he perceived this, and that they were going to silence him; and therefore he breaks off abruptly in the midst of his discourse, and by that spirit of wisdom, courage, and power, wherewith he was filled, he sharply rebuked his persecutors, and exposed their true character; for, if they will not admit the testimony of the gospel to them, it shall become a testimony against them.
I. They, like their fathers, were stubborn and wilful, and would not be wrought upon by the various methods God took to reclaim and reform them; they were like their fathers, inflexible both to the word of God and to his providences. 1. They, like their fathers, were stubborn and wilful, and would not be wrought upon by the various methods God took to reclaim and reform them; they were like their fathers, inflexible both to the word of God and to his providences. 1. They were stiff-necked (Act 7:51), and would not submit their necks to the sweet and easy yoke of God's government, nor draw in it, but were like a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke; or they would not bow their heads, no, not to God himself, would not do obeisance to him, would not humble themselves before him. The stiff neck is the same with the hard heart, obstinate and contumacious, and that will not yield - the general character of the Jewish nation, Exo 32:9; Exo 33:3, Exo 33:5; Exo 34:9; Deu 9:6, Deu 9:13; Deu 31:27; Eze 2:4. 2. They were uncircumcised in heart and ears their hearts and ears were not devoted and given up to God, as the body of the people were in profession by the sign of circumcision: "In name and show you are circumcised Jews, but in heart and ears you are still uncircumcised heathens, and pay no more deference to the authority of your God than they do, Jer 9:26. You are under the power of unmortified lusts and corruptions, which stop your ears to the voice of God, and harden your hearts to that which is both most commanding and most affecting." They had not that circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, Col 2:11.
II. They, like their fathers, were not only not influenced by the methods God took to reform them, but they were enraged and incensed against them: You do always resist the Holy Ghost. 1. They resisted the Holy Ghost speaking to them by the prophets, whom they opposed and contradicted, hated and ridiculed; this seems especially meant here, by the following explication, Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? In persecuting and silencing those that spoke by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost they resisted the Holy Ghost. Their fathers resisted the Holy Ghost in the prophets that God raised up to them, and so did they in Christ's apostles and ministers, who spoke by the same Spirit, and had greater measures of his gifts than the prophets of the Old Testament had, and yet were more resisted. 2. They resisted the Holy Ghost striving with them by their own consciences, and would not comply with the convictions and dictates of them. God's Spirit strove with them as with the old world, but in vain; they resisted him, took part with their corruptions against their convictions, and rebelled against the light. There is that in our sinful hearts that always resists the Holy Ghost, a flesh that lusts against the Spirit, and wars against his motions; but in the hearts of God's elect, when the fulness of time comes, this resistance is overcomer and overpowered, and after a struggle the throne of Christ is set up in the soul, and every thought that had exalted itself against it is brought into captivity to it, Co2 10:4, Co2 10:5. That grace therefore which effects this change might more fitly be called victorious grace than irresistible.
III. They, like their fathers, persecuted and slew those whom God sent unto them to call them to duty, and make them offers of mercy. 1. Their fathers had been the cruel and constant persecutors of the Old Testament prophets (Act 7:51): Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? More or less, one time or other, they had a blow at them all. With regard even to those that lived in the best reigns, when the princes did not persecute them, there was a malignant party in the nation that mocked at them and abused them, and most of them were at last, either by colour of law or popular fury, put to death; and that which aggravated the sin of persecuting the prophets was, that the business of the prophets they were so spiteful at was to show before of the coming of the just One, to give notice of God's kind intentions towards that people, to send the Messiah among them in the fulness of time. Those that were the messengers of such glad tidings should have been courted and caressed, and have had the preferments of the best of benefactors; but, instead of this, they had the treatment of the worst of malefactors. 2. They had been the betrayers and murderers of the just One himself, as Peter had told them, Act 3:14, Act 3:15; Act 5:30. They had hired Judas to betray him, and had in a manner forced Pilate to condemn him; and therefore it is charged upon them that they were his betrayers and murders. Thus they were the genuine seed of those who slew the prophets that foretold his coming, which, by slaying him, they showed they would have done if they had lived then; and thus, as our Saviour had told them, they brought upon themselves the guilt of the blood of all the prophets. To which of the prophets would those have shown any respect who had no regard to the Son of God himself?
IV. They, like their fathers, put contempt upon divine revelation, and would not be guided and governed by it; and this was the aggravation of their sin, that God had given, as to their fathers his law, so to them his gospel, in vain. 1. Their fathers received the law, and did not observe it, Act 7:53. God wrote to them the great things of his law, after he had first spoken them to them; and yet they were counted by them as a strange or foreign thing, which they were no way concerned in. The law is said to be received by the disposition of angels, because angels were employed in the solemnity of giving the law, in the thunderings and lightnings, and the sound of the trumpet. It is said to be ordained by angels (Gal 3:19), God is said to come with ten thousand of his saints to give the law (Deu 33:2), and it was a word spoken by angels, Heb 2:2. This put an honour both upon the law and the Lawgiver, and should increase our veneration for both. But those that thus received the law yet kept it not, but by making the golden calf broke it immediately in a capital instance. 2. They received the gospel now, by the disposition, not of angels, but of the Holy Ghost, - not with the sound of a trumpet, but, which was more strange, in the gift of tongues, and yet they did not embrace it. They would not yield to the plainest demonstrations, any more than their fathers before them did, for they were resolved not to comply with God either in his law or in his gospel.
We have reason to think Stephen had a great deal more to say, and would have said it if they would have suffered him; but they were wicked and unreasonable men with whom he had to do, that could no more hear reason than they could speak it.
Matthew Henry (1662–1714) — Commentary on the Whole Bible. This section covers verses 51–53. Public domain.
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TertullianAD 220
An Answer to the Jews
What is more manifest than the mystery of this "wood,"-that the obduracy of this world had been sunk in the profundity of error, and is freed in baptism by the "wood" of Christ, that is, of His passion; in order that what had formerly perished through the "tree" in Adam, should be restored through the "tree" in Christ? while we, of course, who have succeeded to, and occupy, the room of the prophets, at the present day sustain in the world that treatment which the prophets always suffered on account of divine religion: for some they stoned, some they banished; more, however, they delivered to mortal slaughter, -a fact which they cannot deny.
John ChrysostomAD 407
Homily on Acts 17
What is the reason that at this point he speaks in the tone of invective? Great was his boldness of speech, when at the point to die: for in fact I think he knew that this was the case. "Ye stiffnecked," he says, "and uncircumcised in heart and ears." This also is from the prophets: nothing is of himself. "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye." When it was not His will that sacrifices should be, ye sacrifice: when it is His will, then again ye do not sacrifice: when He would not give you commandments, ye drew them to you: when ye got them, ye neglected them. Again, when the Temple stood, ye worshipped idols: when it is His will to be worshipped without a Temple, ye do the opposite.
John ChrysostomAD 407
Homily on Acts 17
Observe, he says not, "Ye resist God," but, "the Spirit:" so far was he from knowing any difference between Them. And, what is greater: "As your fathers did," he says, "so do ye." Thus also did Christ (reproach them), forasmuch as they were always boasting much of their fathers.
Augustine of HippoAD 430
TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 6.3.1-4
Therefore when he sent the Holy Spirit, he manifested him visibly in two ways, as a dove and as fire; as a dove upon the baptized Lord, as fire upon the assembled disciples.… Here we saw a dove upon the Lord; there parted tongues upon the assembled disciples; in the one, simplicity is shown, in the other, fervor. For there are those who are said to be simple, and they are indolent; they are called simple, but they are lazy. Not such a one was Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit. He was simple, because he harmed no one; he was fervent, because he reproached the impious. For he did not keep silence before the Jews; his are those fiery words, “Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you have always resisted the Holy Spirit.” Great vehemence! He rages, but as a dove without bile. For, in order that you may know that he raged without bile, they who were ravens, when they heard these words, immediately ran for stones [to use] against the dove. Stephen began to be stoned; and he, who but a little before was raging and boiling spirit, as if he had attacked his enemies, and as if he had assailed them with violence by those fiery and blazing words as you have heard, “Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears,” so that he who heard these words might think that Stephen, if he were allowed, wished them immediately annihilated—when the rocks were coming on him from their hands, on his knees he said, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” He adhered to the unity of the dove. For earlier his master, on whom the dove descended, had done that; hanging on the cross, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
BedeAD 735
Retractions on Acts
Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. He shows them that the circumcision of the foreskin, in which they gloried against the grace of the Gospel, is of no avail for salvation, who were proven to have unclean thoughts and hearing. And at the same time, by speaking these things as if interpreting, he explains to them what the Angel signified when he appeared to Moses in the flame of fire from the bush, so that the bush burned but was not consumed. For the fire indeed signifies the Holy Spirit; the bush, which is a kind of thorn, figuratively denounced the sins of that people. Therefore, the Lord appeared to Moses in the bush having fire, but not consumed, to indicate that He Himself indeed came with the enlightenment and fervor of the Holy Spirit to instruct the people, but He would not consume the sins of that same people, although He would always oppose them with His pious benefits amidst the thickest thorns of their wickedness.
Source: Quotations drawn from early Church Fathers and historical Christian theologians (AD 100–1500). Some quotes address the surrounding passage context rather than this verse alone.
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SUMMARY
Acts 7:51 captures Stephen's climactic and confrontational indictment of the Sanhedrin during his defense, immediately preceding his martyrdom. In this verse, Stephen accuses his Jewish audience of spiritual stubbornness, labeling them "stiffnecked" and "uncircumcised in heart and ears," thereby asserting their continuous and active resistance to the Holy Spirit. He draws a direct parallel between their present disobedience and the historical pattern of rebellion demonstrated by their ancestors, culminating his lengthy historical recounting of Israel's repeated rejection of God's messengers.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Stephen's address in Acts 7:51 is a masterclass in prophetic rhetoric, employing several powerful literary devices. The most striking is Metaphor, particularly in the phrases "stiffnecked" and "uncircumcised in heart and ears." "Stiffnecked" is a vivid metaphor borrowed from animal husbandry, depicting an ox refusing to yield to the yoke, which powerfully symbolizes an unyielding, rebellious will against divine authority. "Uncircumcised in heart and ears" extends the physical concept of circumcision into the spiritual realm, using it metaphorically to describe a profound spiritual insensitivity and an inability to truly hear or receive God's word. This is a form of Figurative Language that underscores spiritual blindness and obstinacy. The phrase "as your fathers did, so do ye" employs Analogy and Historical Parallelism, drawing a direct and damning comparison between the present audience and their rebellious ancestors, emphasizing a recurring pattern of disobedience throughout Israel's history. The verse also utilizes Direct Address and Apostrophe, as Stephen directly confronts his powerful accusers, delivering a highly confrontational and accusatory climax to his sermon.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Stephen's indictment in Acts 7:51 encapsulates a profound theological truth about humanity's fallen nature and its persistent resistance to divine revelation. It highlights that true covenant relationship with God is not merely external or ritualistic (like physical circumcision) but requires an internal transformation of the heart and a willingness to hear and obey. The resistance to the Holy Spirit is presented as the ultimate act of rebellion, as the Spirit is the active agent of God's presence and truth in the world. This verse serves as a stark reminder that even those who are outwardly religious or hold positions of authority can be spiritually hardened and actively oppose God's will, particularly when it challenges their preconceived notions or power structures. It underscores the biblical emphasis on the condition of the heart as paramount to genuine faith and obedience.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Stephen's fiery words in Acts 7:51, though directed at a specific audience in a dramatic historical moment, carry timeless relevance for all who claim to follow God. The challenge to be "uncircumcised in heart and ears" prompts a deep self-examination: are we genuinely open to the Holy Spirit's leading, even when it confronts our comfort zones, challenges our traditions, or demands radical obedience? Spiritual stubbornness, like the "stiffnecked" ox, can manifest subtly in our lives through an unwillingness to forgive, a refusal to repent, or a resistance to new truths revealed in Scripture. This verse calls us to cultivate a posture of humility and spiritual sensitivity, actively listening for the Spirit's voice and yielding our wills to His transformative power. It reminds us that true faith is not merely intellectual assent or outward religious practice, but a dynamic, ongoing surrender of the heart and mind to God, allowing the Spirit to continually refine and guide us away from the pattern of historical rebellion.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Why does Stephen use such harsh language, especially when on trial for his life?
Answer: Stephen's language is indeed confrontational, but it is deeply rooted in the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. Prophets frequently used strong, direct words to call Israel to repentance and expose their spiritual rebellion. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:55), was not merely defending himself but delivering God's truth to a hardened audience. His words were a final, desperate plea and a prophetic indictment, mirroring the very resistance he accused them of. He understood the gravity of their rejection of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and his passion for God's truth outweighed any concern for his personal safety. His boldness highlights the conviction and courage that comes from being empowered by the Holy Spirit.
What does "uncircumcised in heart and ears" mean in a spiritual sense?
Answer: While physical circumcision was the outward sign of God's covenant with Israel, "uncircumcised in heart and ears" refers to a profound spiritual condition. It means that despite outward religious observance, a person's inner being—their mind, will, and affections (heart)—is closed off to God's truth, and their ability to hear and obey His word (ears) is impaired. It signifies a lack of spiritual responsiveness, an unwillingness to submit to God's will, and an inability to truly grasp divine revelation. This concept is found in the Old Testament, where prophets like Jeremiah called for a "circumcision of the heart" (Jeremiah 4:4) as a sign of true devotion and obedience to God, emphasizing that true covenant relationship is inward, not just outward.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Stephen's accusation in Acts 7:51, though delivered to the Jewish leaders of his day, finds its ultimate Christ-centered fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The "Holy Ghost" whom they resisted is the very Spirit of God who empowered Jesus throughout His earthly ministry, from His baptism (Matthew 3:16) to His resurrection (Romans 8:11). The persistent resistance to God's messengers, highlighted by Stephen, culminated in the ultimate rejection and crucifixion of God's Son, Jesus, the Messiah. He was the final and complete revelation of God, yet He was met with the same "stiffnecked" and "uncircumcised" hearts that had rejected prophets before Him, leading to His crucifixion outside the city gates (Hebrews 13:12). However, in Christ, the spiritual circumcision of the heart, which Stephen's audience so desperately lacked, is made possible. Through faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit performs this inward work, transforming rebellious hearts of stone into hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26), enabling them to truly hear and obey God's voice. Thus, while Acts 7:51 exposes humanity's chronic rebellion, it simultaneously points to the cross and resurrection as the only means by which this resistance can be overcome, offering new life and a Spirit-empowered responsiveness to God's truth, fulfilling the promise of a new covenant where God's law is written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33).